One of the most prevalent challenges in designing for an art school is to impress. It’s no mean feat when you know that there are student artists and teaching artists all of whom are eagerly waiting for something that beats their imagination. Toyo Ito is...
Kengo Kuma doesn't shy away from incorporating the contextual signature material of a locality into his contemporary designs. For the ArtA Cultural Centre, a competition that featured firms like BIG, SO-IL and NL Architects; he wrapped his proposal with a screen of red clay roof tiles....
The Alesia Museum, by Benard Tschumi, marks an archeological site in central France and commemorates the history of the battle between the Romans, led by Julius Cesar and the Gauls, the indigenenous occupants, under Vercingetorix, over 2,000 years ago in 52 B.C. The museum will...
The Bill and Melinda Gates Hall at Cornell University has a commanding figure in the rather quiet parts of the Cornell Campus in Ithaca, New York. Morphosis Architects were commissioned to design this somewhat dramatic building with an intention by the owners to spack some...
All the way from the 1800s the city of Chicago has spearheaded the skyscraper movement in architecture and the tower forms get more interesting as they evolve. The Aqua Tower is a sculture of sorts that draws inspiration from striated limestone outcroppings common in the Great Lakes...
Bernard Arnault and Baron Albert Frère are two world billionaires in the luxury goods market who are not afraid of spending their money on good things like architecture, wines and jewellery among other high end commodities. Château Cheval Blanc is a wine producer with a...
When you want to expand an iconic building from the past, whom do you call? The case of Kimbell Art Museum was a long one emphasized by the fact that it was designed by one of the very best American architects to have graced the...
The Dazaifu Tenmangu is one of the most popular religious destinations in Japan. Built in 919 AD, the Shinto shrine sees about 2 million pilgrims a year, who come to pay homage to the famed 'god of examinations'. The walk up to the shrine has...
Where do people organising a protest meet? In a forlorn church basement? In a student's hall in the wee hours of the night? Around an aggravated member's kitchen island? From the days of Martin Luther Jr. until now, social justice conversations have always occurred in hushed tones. Addressing...
Santiago Calatrava is one architect who seems to breathe and ooze controversy with everything he designs. A structural engineer as well, he has been criticized of designing projects that are almost impossible to build leading to cost overruns and technical flaws. However, for this particular project,...
Jean Nouvel has always liked vegetation and to a big extent believes that vegetation is part of the vocabularies of architecture. There is no project that has manifested his belief in living walls than has the One Central Park towers in Sydney. Located in the...
Herzog & de Meuron is one of the world's most respected architectural firms. The practice has over the years developed a reputation for conjuring up some of the planet's most original building solutions. In 2006, with Miami seeking to inspire life to the downtown waterfront of...
In 2001, the announcement that Beijing would be host of 2008 World Olympics was made and so the journey to prepare Beijing for the 16-day event began. There was an immediate need to build stadiums, roads, hotels, highrises, railways and a new airport terminal to...
Not so far from Dallas City's concrete jungle, shimmering lights and labyrinthine expressways is the Trinity River Audubon Centre, located in the largest urban hardwood forest in the United States. Antoine Predock Zanher Designed by 2006 AIA Gold Medalist Antoine Predock and BRW Architects, the center is a...
One World Trade Center an all defying glass tower that literally pokes through it's sky line as the tallest building in New York City and the fifth tallest in the world, a design spearheaded by David Childs from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The 104-story supertall...
The City of Mons, looking to breathe life by the addition of a convention centre, enlisted Jewish Museum architect: Daniel Libeskind. With a site located in proximity to the 17th Century Belfry Tower, a UNESCO Heritage Site - an opportunity to bridge the city's heritage...
The Neugebauer House is located in Naples, Florida, in the luxurious residential area of Fort Charles Dr. Overlooking the Doubloon Bay, this house was designed on a wedge-shaped site with amazing views of the water and palm trees that dominate the landscape. It was designed...
Controversial starchitect Frank Gehry has over the years developed tough skin. He has been accused of creating buildings that are objects of spectacle rather than functional spaces. He has been fired at for escalating project budgets; for over exploring: not knowing when to stop! But...
The Kaleidoscope is an interesting invention coined by Sir David Brewster in 1817. The word ‘Kaleidoscope’ is a combination of ancient Greek words which would all come to refer to the observation of beautiful forms and shapes. Like the Kaleidoscope which uses a collection of...
Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall is a world-class performance venue to the privileged people of Los Angeles and a tribute to Walt Disney’s devotion to the arts, an idea coined by his wife, Lillian Disney. To any eye, it's an intriguing combination of fervent...
Elite architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group was called to propose a mixed-use development at the intersection of Howe and Beach streets in downtown Vancouver. Canada's premier real estate developer Westbank, had in mind a development that would feature residential units that sat on a state-of-the-art...
The New Acropolis Museum was designed to express the imposing nature of the Acropolis, a town at the very top of the city of Athens and one of the most renowned places with so much architectural and historic significance. The town hosts some of Greece's...
Public facilities play a major role in setting the mood of a city. Most often than not; libraries, museums and other public amenities lack the spirit or oomph to inspire life above the utility for which they are prescribed. With rapid urbanisation comes the need for not...
Cidade das Artes is a massively impressive concrete building standing in the middle of two busy highways in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The architect took over a site in the middle of a new district in Rio de Janeiro called Barra da Tijuca. With a...
Birthed as a vision of Por-Shih Lin, Chairman of Shihlien Chemical Industrial (Jiangsu) Co. Ltd. - the Building on the Water is a 11 000 sqm office complex that "floats" on the 100 000 sqm artificial lake of the industrial park. Álvaro Siza, the 1992...
Following a high-profile international competition (that included high profile names like Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Richard Rogers) lasting for six months, Foster + Partners was appointed to design the first full-block office building on Park Avenue for 50 years. The new tower at 425 Park Avenue,...
Pier 55 is a public park and performance space on Manhattan’s lower west side commissioned by a new non-profit organisation, funded primarily by the Diller - von Furstenberg family, which will build and operate the pier in cooperation with the Hudson River Park Trust. The...
The Sleuk Rith Institute, a new institute and genocide memorial in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, brings together a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library. As a vision of Youk Chhang, a human rights activist and investigator of the Khmer...
Architecture begins with an idea – and the maestros of architecture not only set out on radical journeys into the unknown; they also made it back with gems of sheer beauty and incredible ingenuity. I dared to make a list of 40 indisputably famous 21st Century...
There has always been something about the Porsche with me. I'm a big fan of Porsche 911 too. Something about the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Germany, tells me that the company resorted to cutting back on Porsche's courageous and ambitious way of doing things. This...